by Richard Subber | May 26, 2026 | Book reviews, Books, Poetry, Reviews of other poets
over-engineered and under-imagined…
Book review:
Collected Poems
by Charles Kenneth “C. K.” Williams (1936-2015)
Won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2006
682 pages
Williams was a prolific poet.
His work is relentlessly structural, to the point of being stylized. He’s in love with lines that are almost the same length, and too long for the page. In too many of his Collected Poems, Williams allows every line of text to stray down to the next line, thus abandoning most of the dramatic effects of artful enjambment.
Williams has over-engineered his poetry, for my taste. I tried reading the poems aloud, but that tiresome exercise confirmed my ennui instead of adding some vitality.
For me, whatever Williams was trying to say has been lost in the dusty storeroom where he has neatly boxed and labeled his poems.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2026 All rights reserved.
St. Ives, another look…
less than meets the eye
by Robert Louis Stevenson
(a book review)
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Writing Rainbows: Poems for Grown-Ups with 59 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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by Richard Subber | May 21, 2026 | Book reviews, Books, Joys of reading, Language, Reviews of other poets
Kids will love it
Book review:
Sad underwear and other complications
by Judith Viorst (b1931)
New York: Atheneum Books for Young Readers, Simon & Schuster, 1995
78 pages
This is a great book of great poems that will make little kids laugh, and make big kids laugh, and make parents laugh.
Such as:
The Seventh Swimming Lesson
Stop the presses.
Call a reporter.
Sally just put her face in the water.
How do I know it’s a great book? I’m a grandfather, and it makes me laugh.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2026 All rights reserved.
Movie review: A Doll’s House
Henrik Ibsen’s classic on abuse…
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Seeing far: Selected poems with 47 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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by Richard Subber | May 17, 2026 | Poetry, Reviews of other poets, Tidbits
the drawbridge is creaking…
“…How can you ask a princess
To deal with this terrible mess?
Wake me again in another hundred years.”
from the children’s poem “…and after a hundred years had passed, Sleeping Beauty awoke (at last!) from her slumber” by Judith Viorst, in her book Sad Underwear, New York: Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 1995
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Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2026 All rights reserved.
Book review: Shakespeare’s Wife
Germaine Greer went overboard a bit…
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Seeing far: Selected poems with 47 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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by Richard Subber | May 14, 2026 | Book reviews, Books, Poetry, Reviews of other poets
una canción
Book review:
Bookjoy, Wordjoy
by Pat Mora (b1942)
New York: Lee and Low Books, Inc., 2018
32 pages
“una canción del corazón”
a song of the heart, Pat Mora’s Bookjoy, Wordjoy
If you read these poems aloud, your feet will start dancing.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2026 All rights reserved.
Movie review: Same Time, Next Year
all-American adultery, oh yeah…
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In other words: Poems for your eyes and ears with 64 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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by Richard Subber | Apr 14, 2026 | My poetry, Poetry, Reviews of other poets
I welcome the time…
I decided to entertain myself at breakfast in the Linden Ponds Café
by doing this little re-write
of Robert Frost’s memorable poem, “A Time to Talk.”
I kept his rhythm and rhyme, I made the text a bit smoother,
I think I preserved his earthy friendly tone.
A Time to Talk, Rick’s version
When a friend calls down to me from the road
and slows his horse to just a walk,
I don’t stand still and look around
on all the hills I haven’t hoed,
and shout from where I am: “What is it?”
I know to welcome time to talk.
I thrust my hoe in the mellow ground,
blade-end up and five feet tall,
I start to climb to the old stone wall
for a friendly visit.
February 3, 2025
Hingham, MA
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Frost’s original version, it’s in the public domain:
A Time to Talk
Robert Frost (1874-1963)
When a friend calls to me from the road
And slows his horse to a meaning walk,
I don’t stand still and look around
On all the hills I haven’t hoed,
And shout from where I am, What is it?
No, not as there is a time to talk.
I thrust my hoe in the mellow ground,
Blade-end up and five feet tall,
And plod: I go up to the stone wall
For a friendly visit.
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My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2026 All rights reserved.
Book review: An Empire on the Edge
by Nick Bunker
The British wanted to win
the Revolutionary War,
but they had good reasons
for not trying too hard…
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many waters: more poems with 53 free verse poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
Your comments are welcome—tell me what you’re thinking.
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by Richard Subber | Apr 9, 2026 | Joys of reading, Language, Reviews of other poets
I’m open to being tantalized…
“We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men”
from “The Hollow Men,” 1925, by T. S. Eliot
Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888-1965)
American-British writer, popularly acclaimed as a great poet of the 20th century
At long last, I’ve tried T. S. Eliot’s poetry.
I respectfully think that T. S. Eliot’s poetry is a bloomin’ wasteland…
Maybe I’ll put Collected Poems of T. S. Eliot back on the shelf, and try again after a while.
Maybe not.
It’s not that I mind Eliot’s deliberate contradictions so much. I’m willing to be provoked. I’m open to being tantalized. I’m ready to be pushed or pulled outside my comfort zone.
The sticky point for me, with Eliot’s poetry, is that I never seem to get to the point, or maybe I simply don’t get the point. When I get to the end of one of his longish poems, I’m really not sure where I started, or where I wandered, or where I arrived.
I find little coherence in Eliot’s words and phrases and passages.
I think of myself as a wordsmith, and I love the beauty of elegant phrases and shimmering, specific, steely, selective, stately, splendid words that tell a delicious story or evoke a bloom of emotion.
For my taste, T. S. Eliot’s poetry isn’t tasty, and it’s a bloomin’ wasteland of jumbled words, fractured images, and unfinished imaginations.
If you’re wondering where all the flowers have gone, don’t look for answers in Eliot’s work.
Source: T. S. Eliot, Collected Poems of T. S. Eliot (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Company, 1958), 101.
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Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2026 All rights reserved.
“Fishering,” by Brian Doyle
…what meets the eye…
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Above all: Poems of dawn and more with 74 free verse poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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